NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

5G Design of Physical Signals and Channels NR Physical Layer

Special Articles on Release 15 Standardization

―Advancements in the Completed Initial 5G and LTE/LTE-Advanced Specifications―

NR Physical Layer Specifications

NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

in 5G

5G Laboratories Kazuki Takeda Hiroki Harada Ryosuke Osawa

Communication Device Development Department Yuichi Kakishima
DOCOMO Beijing Communications Laboratories Co., Ltd. Lihui Wang Runxin Wang

A Work Item of the detailed specifications of 5G RAN for 5G commercial services

is being conducted in 3GPP. The non-standalone NR specifications, which enable
early deployment of NR carriers by exploiting LTE/LTE-Advanced carriers as the
master node carriers, were completed in December 2017. In June 2018, the
standalone NR specifications, which require full NR functionality and do not rely
on LTE/LTE-Advanced carriers, were also completed. In this article, we present
the NR physical layer specifications.

quality of the content available to these terminals

1. Introduction
With the spread of smartphones and tablet ter-
minals, it has become easier for people to collect in-
formation and enjoy rich contents such as videos
and music at any time and in any location. The
has also been improved dramatically. Furthermore,
it is expected that services made possible by the
Internet of Things (IoT) era, where everything
is connected to networks, will become increasingly
important in the future.

©2019 NTT DOCOMO, INC.

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the copies.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G
Under such circumstances, the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) formulated the New
Radio (NR) standard for wireless communication in
5th Generation mobile communication systems (5G),
which doesn t have backward compatibility with
LTE and LTE-Advanced. NR supports various use-
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
cases such as enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB),
Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications
(URLLC), and massive Machine-Type Communica-
tions (mMTC), over a very wide frequency range
from below 1 GHz to 52.6 GHz. This article describes
the underlying technologies from the physical lay-
er perspective of NR that are specified to realize
these requirements from the various use-cases.
2. Frame Structure/Duplex Mode
2.1 Support for New Subcarrier Spacings
NR adopts a radio access scheme called Orthog-
1
onal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)* ,
which is the same scheme used in LTE. To adapt
to services requiring low latency and to enable
the use of higher frequencies (including millime-
2
ter-wave* frequencies), NR supports higher sub-
carrier*3 spacings of 30, 60, 120, and 240 kHz based
on the LTE subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz. Note
that a subcarrier spacing of 240 kHz is only used
4
for Synchronization Signal (SS)* /Physical Broad-
5
cast CHannel (PBCH)* blocks, as described later
(In addition, the SS/PBCH block does not support
a subcarrier spacing of 60 kHz).
When user equipment initially accesses the net-
work, it detects an SS/PBCH block by assuming a
subcarrier spacing that can be set in this carrier,
*1 OFDM: A multi-carrier modulation format where information
signals are modulated with orthogonal subcarriers. A type of
digital modulation scheme where information is split across
multiple orthogonal carriers and transmitted in parallel. It can
transmit data with high spectral efficiency.
*2 Millimeter waves: Radio frequency band with wavelengths in
the range of 1 to 10 mm.
*3 Subcarrier: Each carrier in a multi-carrier modulation system that
transmits bits of information in parallel over multiple carriers.
*4 SS: A physical signal enabling the mobile station to detect
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and based on the PBCH detected in this block, it
identifies the subcarrier spacings of the control/
data channels, etc.
2.2 Frame Structure
In NR, multiple OFDM symbols*6 are used to
construct slots*7, subframes*8, and frames*9. A slot
consists of 14 OFDM symbols for the given sub-
carrier spacing, a subframe is defined as a 1 ms
interval, and a frame is defined as 10 subframes.
These relationships are shown in Figure 1.
In the frequency domain, a resource block con-
sists of 12 consecutive subcarriers for the given
subcarrier spacing.
In NR, unlike LTE, the frame structure is not
dependent on the duplex mode*10. In other words,
it uses a common frame structure regardless of the
duplex mode.
NR provides much greater flexibility than LTE
in the uplink and downlink patterns of Time Divi-
sion Duplex (TDD)*11 communication. It is possible
to semi-statically or dynamically set various up-
link/downlink patterns by the system information
and/or by user-specific higher layer signaling*12
and/or L1 signaling*13.
It is also possible to perform TDD communica-
tion without using higher layer/L1 signaling to indi-
cate the uplink/downlink patterns. The user equip-
ment can recognize the direction of uplink/downlink
communication based on periodic transmission and
reception that are configured by higher layer sig-
naling and/or indicated by dynamic signaling in the
physical layer.
cell frequency, reception timing, and cell ID in order to begin
communications when powering up.
*5 PBCH: A channel for broadcasting essential wireless parame-
ters for receiving control channel and corresponding shared
channel (such as system frame number, control channel con-
figuration including sub-carrier spacing and so on).
*6 OFDM symbol: A unit of transmission data consisting of mul-
tiple subcarriers. A Cyclic Prefix (CP) is inserted at the front
of each symbol.
*7
 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

Wireless frame (10 ms)

#0 #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 Time
Subframe
(1 ms)
Slot (14-symbol) Normal cyclic prefix
Subcarrier spacing
Subcarrier No. of symbols No. of slots No. of subframes
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

15 kHz #0 #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 spacing [kHz] per slot per subframe per frame

Slot (14-symbol) 15 14 1 10
30 14 2 10
30 kHz
60 14 4 10
Slot (14-symbol) 120 14 8 10

60 kHz
Extended cyclic prefix
Slot (14-symbol)
Subcarrier No. of symbols No. of slots No. of subframes
interval [kHz] per slot per subframe per frame
120 kHz
60 12 4 10
Slot (14-symbol)

240 kHz

Figure 1 The relationship between slots, subframes and frames

provide information that is essential for initial access

3. Initial Access and Mobility
and mobility, including system parameters whereby
A user equipment s initial access in NR is per- user equipment can discover NR cells*19, establish
formed according to a procedure that involves the frame synchronization, measure the downlink re-
steps of detecting a Synchronization Signal (SS), ception quality, and carry out other actions neces-
14
acquiring broadcast system information* , and es- sary for the reception of system information. The
tablishing connection with the network by a ran- base station can set the transmission timing and
15
dom access* procedure. transmission period of the SS/PBCH block for each
carrier, and indicates this information to the user
3.1 SS/PBCH Block equipment.
As in LTE, the SS in NR consists of two signals: In NR, multiple resources for SS/PBCH block
16
a Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS)* , and a transmission are defined within a half frame of 5
17
Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS)* . The SS ms duration, where the maximum number of SS/
together with the PBCH and the DeModulation PBCH block transmissions per carrier depends on
18
Reference Signals for PBCH (DMRS for PBCH)* the frequency band. As shown in Figure 3, the num-
forms an SS/PBCH block as shown in Figure 2. ber of SS/PBCH blocks to be transmitted can be
The base station uses this SS/PBCH block to set according to factors such as the base station

*8 Subframe: A unit of radio resources in the time domain, con-
sisting of multiple slots.
*9 Frame: The period in which an encoder/decoder operates or
a data signal of length corresponding to that period.
*10 Duplex mode: A communication scheme where transmission
can be performed in the uplink and downlink simultaneously.
Generally implemented as Frequency Division Duplex (FDD)
or Time Division Duplex (TDD) (see *11).
*11 TDD: A bidirectional transmit/receive system. This system achieves
bidirectional communication by allocating different time slots
to uplink and downlink transmissions on the same frequency.
*12 Higher layer signaling: In this article, upper layer signaling re-
fers to messages that are transmitted and received in order
to control terminals in the Medium Access Control (MAC)
layer and higher layers. Examples include Radio Resource
Control (RRC) messages and MAC control elements.
*13 L1 signaling: In this paper, L1 signaling refers to messages that
are transmitted and received in order to control terminals at
layers above the MAC layer. Examples include Downlink Con-
trol Information (DCI) and Uplink Control Information (UCI).

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
0 PSS
Frequency
Time (symbols)

1 PBCH (resource blocks)

2 SSS
3 PBCH
127 subcarrier
DMRS for PBCH
20 resource blocks
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

Subcarrier spacing of SS/PBCH block Transmission bandwidth of SS/PBCH block

15 kHz 3.6 MHz
30 kHz 7.2 MHz
120 kHz 28.8 MHz
240 kHz 57.6 MHz

Figure 2 SS/PBCH block configuration

Detect frame/slot timing

from SS/PBCH block
index

SS/PBCH block transmission Unused SS block candidate resources

periodicity (e.g., 20 ms) can be used for data communication etc.

Multiple SS/PBCH blocks (transmitted with different beams)

Figure 3 SS/PBCH block transmission configuration example

antenna configuration. With multiple SS/PBCH blocks, into three types: broadcast information transmitted
20
different beamforming* can be applied to each SS/ by the PBCH, system information necessary for ini-
PBCH block in order to increase the communica- tial access, and other system information.
tion range and expand the area of coverage. The PBCH includes a System Frame Number
(SFN)*21 and information that user equipment needs
3.2 System Information Notification to establish frame synchronization with a NR cell
Broadcast information in NR can be classified after detecting an SS/PBCH block, such as an index

*14 Broadcast system information: Essential system information
(including cell access information required for executing the
procedure for connecting mobile terminals to cells, random
access channel information and so on) to be broadcast within
a cell.
*15 Random access: A procedure executed by mobile terminals
and base stations for connecting uplink signals and synchro-
nizing their transmission timing.
*16 PSS: A known signal that the user equipment first searches
for in the cell search procedure.
*17 SSS: A known signal transmitted to enable detection of the
physical cell ID in the cell search procedure.
*18 DMRS for PBCH: A known signal transmitted to measure the
state of a radio channel for PBCH demodulation.
*19 Cell: The smallest unit of area in which transmission and re-
ception of wireless signals is done between a cellular mobile
communications network and mobile terminals.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

for identifying the symbol position of the detected
SS/PBCH block in a half frame. The PBCH also
carries system parameters that are needed for the
22
reception of System Information Block*
(SIB 1), which is described below.
To perform random access, it is necessary to
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
At the first step, the user equipment transmits
a Physical Random Access CHannel (PRACH)*23 to
the base station. As shown in Table 1, NR defines
type 1 13 PRACH formats in total, including some formats
with fixed subcarrier spacings that follow the de-
sign of LTE PRACH, and other formats with vari-

have information such as the uplink carrier infor-
mation and random access signal configuration in-
formation. This is included as part of the information
necessary for initial access, which is broadcast to
the user equipment in an NR cell as SIB1.
3.3 Random Access
Random access in NR is performed in four steps
in the same way as in LTE.
able subcarrier spacings that can fit into the dura-
tion of an integer number of symbols in an NR slot.
When a base station is operated with beamform-
ing where different beams are applied to multiple
SS/PBCH block transmissions, different PRACH
transmission resources are associated with differ-
ent SS/PBCH blocks. User equipment transmits a
PRACH to initiate random access by using the
PRACH resource associated with the selected

Table 1 PRACH format

Format Sequence No. of OFDM Subcarrier

Time duration Bandwidth
number length symbol repetitions spacing

0 1 1 subframe

1 2 1.25 kHz 3 subframe 1.05 MHz

839
2 4 3.5 subframe

3 4 5 kHz 1 subframe 4.20 MHz

A1 2 2 symbols

A2 4 4 symbols

A3 6 6 symbols

B1 2 2 symbols
{15, 30, 60, 120} {2.09, 4.17, 8.34,
B2 139 4 4 symbols
kHz 16.68} MHz
B3 6 6 symbols

B4 12 12 symbols

C0 1 2 symbols

C2 4 6 symbols

*20 Beamforming: A technique for increasing or decreasing the *23 PRACH: A physical channel used by mobile terminals as an
gain of antennas in a specific direction by controlling the am- initial transmitted signal in the random-access procedure.
plitude and phase of multiple antennas to form a directional
pattern with the antennas.
*21 SFN: A number allocated to each radio frame of 10 ms.
*22 SIB: A specific block of system information broadcast from an
base station to mobile terminals. There are multiple types of
SIBs.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G
SS/PBCH block. In this way, the base station can
use the received PRACH resources to figure out
which SS/PBCH block (and thus which beamform-
ing direction) was received by the user equipment
transmitting a PRACH. Therefore, in the subse-
quent random access procedure consisting of ran-
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
dom access response reception, connection request
message transmission and contention resolution mes-
sage reception, the base station can use transmis-
sion/reception beamforming directed specifically to
the user equipment.
3.4 Mobility
In NR, as in LTE, the base station performs tasks
such as selecting serving cells, performing hando-
vers and adding/deleting secondary cells based on
the report from corresponding user equipment re-
garding measurement results on downlink reference
signals. The SSS included in the SS/PBCH block
transmitted by the base station is a basic cell-specific
reference signal in NR. The user equipment uses
it to measure and report the Reference Signal Re-
ceived Power (RSRP) and Reference Signal Received
Quality (RSRQ) in each cell according to settings
from the base station.
4. MIMO/Beamforming
4.1 MIMO Transmission Method
In the high frequency band, it is very important
24
to obtain a high beamforming gain* by using many
antennas to compensate for the effects of radio wave
attenuation. The high frequency band of NR re-
quires the use of Multiple Input Multiple Output
*24 Gain: One of the radiation characteristics of an antenna. An
indicator of how many times larger the radiation strength in
the antenna s direction of peak radiation is relative to a stand-
ard antenna.
*25 MIMO: A signal transmission technology that improves com-
munications quality and spectral efficiency by using multiple
transmitter and receiver antennas to transmit signals at the
same time and same frequency.
*26 Spectral efficiency: The number of data bits that can be trans-
mitted per unit time and unit frequency band.
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(MIMO)*25 technology that assumes the availabil-
ity of hybrid beamforming using up to 256 antenna
elements at the base station and up to 32 antenna
elements at the user equipment.
Hybrid beamforming is a technique that can re-
duce the cost of implementing circuits for beamform-
ing in high-frequency bands. It consists of digital
beamforming to perform signal control in the base-
band, and analog beamforming to perform signal
control in the RF (Radio Frequency). Since analog
beamforming cannot be controlled in sub-band units
due to implementation constraints, wideband beam-
forming is generally used.
To improve the spectral efficiency*26, it is essen-
tial to use spatial multiplexing in addition to beam-
forming. For the downlink, codebook*27 based closed-
loop*28 precoding*29 is specified to accommodate up
to eight layers of single-user MIMO*30 and up to
twelve layers of multi-user MIMO*31. For the up-
link, two transmission methods are supported, name-
ly codebook-based and non-codebook-based trans-
mission. It is possible to transmit up to four layers
with single-user uplink MIMO. The non-codebook-
based transmission method is designed by assum-
ing beam reciprocity*32 is supported in the user
equipment. The user equipment receives a down-
link reference signal (RS) such as SS/PBCH blocks
or Channel State Information RS (CSI-RS)*33, and
determines the uplink precoder based on the re-
ceived downlink RS.
4.2 Reference Signal Structure
The RS structure of NR basically follows that
of LTE while achieving the flexibility to adapt to
*27 Codebook: A set of predetermined precoding weight matrix
candidates.
*28 Closed-loop: A method of using feedback information from
receivers.
*29 Precoding: A process for improving the quality of signal re-
ception by multiplying signals before transmission with weights
according to the current radio propagation channel.
*30 Single-user MIMO: Technology that uses MIMO transmission
at identical temporal frequencies for a single user.
 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

operation in various different frequency bands and
scenarios. An example of a downlink RS structure
is shown in Figure 4.
If an RS is transmitted constantly, it may cause
design constraints for possible RS and channel de-
signs in future releases. Therefore, NR tries to avoid
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
additional mapping of 0‒3 symbols of Additional
(AD) DM-RS in order to suppress overheads*34.
TRS has the same signal sequence generation
with CSI-RS. However, TRS is transmitted in the
intervals of 4 subcarriers and 4 OFDM symbols so
that sufficient tracking accuracy is achievable with

specifying an RS that is constantly transmitted (e.g., a reasonable overhead.

Cell-specific Reference Signal (CRS) in LTE), and im-
plements function of CRS by using multiple RSs
instead.
Specifically, the CSI-RS, DeModulation RS (DM-
RS) and Tracking RS (TRS) are specified for chan-
nel state information estimation, data demodulation
and time/frequency tracking, respectively.
DM-RS enables suitable tracking of a wide range
of channel fluctuation speeds and is specified with
a structure having a Front-Load (FL) DM-RS mapped
in the front part of the data channel as well as
In high-frequency bands, phase noise*35 would
be a serious issue. Therefore, in NR, Phase-Tracking
Reference Signal (PT-RS) is newly specified as a
UE-specific reference signal.
4.3 Beam Control Techniques
Beam control in L1/L2*36 can be divided into
beam management and CSI acquisition.
Beam management is a particularly effective
technique at high frequencies and is generally aimed
at establishing and maintaining transmitting/

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
0
PDCCH (2 symbols)
1
2 CSI-RS (8 ports)
3 DM-RS (1 symbol each for FL and AD)
4
TRS
5
6 PT-RS
7
8
9
Subcarrier

10
11

OFDM symbol

Figure 4 Example of downlink reference signal configuration

*31 Multi-user MIMO: Technology that uses MIMO transmission quality.

at identical temporal frequencies for multiple users. *35 Phase noise: Phase fluctuation that occurs due to frequency
*32 Beam reciprocity: A technique whereby radio equipment de- components other than those of the carrier frequency in a lo-
termines which transmitting beam to use based on information cal oscillator signal.
derived from the received beam. *36 L2: The second layer of the OSI reference model (data link
*33 CSI-RS: A downlink reference signal used by mobile termi- layer).
nals to measure the state of the radio channel.
*34 Overhead: Control information needed for transmitting/receiving
user data, plus radio resources used for other than transmit-
ting user data such as reference signals for measuring received

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G
receiving analog beam pairs between the base sta-
tion and user equipment. For example, the user
equipment compares the L1-Reference Signal Re-
37
ceived Power (RSRP)* of multiple SS/PBCH blocks
and CSI-RS to which different beams have been
applied by the base station, and selects a suitable
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
transmit beam to be reported to the base station.
The base station reports the beam information
applied to the downlink channel, so that the user
equipment can select the corresponding reception
beam to receive the downlink channel. A beam fail-
ure recovery technique is also specified, whereby
user equipment that detects deterioration in the
characteristics of a base station beam can request
a switch to a different beam.
On the other hand, CSI acquisition is used for
purposes such as determining the choice of trans-
mission rank*38, digital beams and Modulation and
39
Coding Scheme (MCS)* . The codebook used for
digital beam control is specified as Type I and Type
II, which have relatively low and relatively high
40
quantization granularity* , respectively. In Type
II, information about two beams and their linear
41
combination* information is reported to the base
station, enabling beam control with higher spatial
granularity.
5. Scheduling/HARQ
In NR, as in LTE, the downlink data channels
and uplink data channels are scheduled based on
42
the Downlink Control Information (DCI)* . The DCI
is transmitted and received via the Physical Down-
43
link Control CHannel (PDCCH)* . As in LTE, it is
*37 RSRP: Received power of a signal measured at a receiver.
RSRP is used as an indicator of receiver sensitivity of a mo-
bile terminal.
*38 Transmission rank: The number of layers (spatial streams)
transmitted simultaneously in MIMO.
*39 MCS: Combinations of modulation scheme and coding rate
decided on beforehand when performing Adaptive Modulation
and Coding.
*40 Quantization granularity: The spatial granularity of beams that
are capable of being formed.
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possible to use the frequency domain resource as-
signment field included in DCI to allocate frequency-
domain resources in resource block units. In addi-
tion, in NR, the DCI is also able to indicate the time-
domain resources for data channel scheduling.
The base station allocates a Physical Downlink
Shared CHannel (PDSCH) to the user equipment and
uses PDCCH to transmit downlink control infor-
mation for the PDSCH. The user equipment re-
ceives and demodulates the PDCCH, and receives
the PDSCH based on this downlink control infor-
mation in the PDCCH. After receiving the PDSCH,
the user equipment sends a Hybrid Automatic Re-
peat reQuest ACKnowledgment (HARQ-ACK)*44
to feed back the results of decoding. HARQ-ACK is
transmitted via the Physical Uplink Control CHannel
(PUCCH)*45, as are Scheduling Requests (SR)*46 and
CSI. The PUCCH transmission timing and resources
can also be indicated by the DCI in the same way as
the data channel. Figure 5 shows an example of data
and HARQ-ACK resource allocation.
In HARQ retransmissions, in addition to the
method whereby the entire transport block as ini-
tially transmitted and received is retransmitted,
another method called code-block-group-based re-
transmission is specified. In code-block-group-based
retransmission, when a transport block consists of
multiple code blocks, only the code block groups
that contain errors are retransmitted instead of
retransmitting the entire transport block.
In general, uplink data scheduling is followed
by scheduling request procedure, in which the us-
er equipment transmits a SR using configured SR
resources (Figure 6 (a)). In this scheme, however,
*41 Linear combination: The linear sum of vectors. The vectors
are multiplied by constant factors and added together.
*42 DCI: Control information transmitted on the downlink that in-
cludes scheduling information needed by each user to demod-
ulate data and information on data modulation and channel
coding rate.
*43 PDCCH: Control channel for the physical layer in the down-
link.
 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

Slot #0 #1 #2 #3 Slot #0 #1 #2 #3

PDCCH PUCCH PDCCH

PDSCH PUSCH
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

PDSCH scheduling DCI PUSCH scheduling DCI

PDSCH frequency resource PUSCH frequency resource

allocation field allocation field
PDSCH time resource PUSCH time resource
Payload allocation field Payload allocation field
HARQ timing indication
field
PUCCH resource allocation
field

(a) Example of PDSCH scheduling and HARQ feedback allocation (b) PUSCH scheduling example

Figure 5 Example of resource allocation for data channel and HARQ-ACK

(a) Dynamic grant (b) Configured grant

UE BS UE BS

Traffic Traffic
SR PUSCH

Traffic
DCI

PUSCH

Traffic

Figure 6 Dynamic grant and configured grant

there is an unavoidable delay due to the schedul- CHannel (PUSCH)*47 resource is configured to a user
ing request step. Therefore, NR supports config- equipment, and the user equipment can transmit
ured grants, whereby a Physical Uplink Shared a PUSCH with this allocated resource when uplink

*44 HARQ-ACK: A receive acknowledgment signal whereby a re- *47 PUSCH: Physical channel used for sending and receiving da-
ceiving node can tell the sending node whether or not the da- ta packets in the uplink.
ta was successfully received (decoded).
*45 PUCCH: Physical channel used for sending and receiving con-
trol signals in the uplink.
*46 SR: A signal from the user to the base station requesting ra-
dio resource allocation for uplink.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

data traffic arrives without performing a schedul- 1) Modulation Schemes

ing request procedure (Fig. 6 (b)). As the primary modulation scheme*48, in addi-
tion to the schemes specified since Release 8 LTE,
256QAM and π/2-BPSK that are available in the
6. Modulation and Channel
latest LTE are also supported in NR.
Coding Schemes For the secondary modulation scheme*49, the
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

Tables 2 and 3 show the modulation and channel same scheme as in LTE ̶ Orthogonal Frequency
coding schemes that can be used for NR downlink Division Multiplexing with a Cyclic Prefix (CP-
and uplink communication, respectively. OFDM*50) ̶ is applied to the downlink channels.
For the uplink channels, it is possible to apply

Table 2 Modulation schemes

Secondary
Primary modulation
modulation Downlink Uplink
scheme
scheme

π/2-BPSK ― ―

BPSK ― PUCCH format 1

QPSK PBCH, PDCCH, PDSCH PUCCH format 1/2, PUSCH

CP-OFDM
16QAM PDSCH PUSCH

64QAM PDSCH PUSCH

256QAM PDSCH PUSCH

π/2-BPSK ― PUCCH format 3/4, PUSCH

QPSK ― PUCCH format 3/4, PUSCH

DFTS-
16QAM ― PUSCH
OFDM
64QAM ― PUSCH

256QAM ― PUSCH

Table 3 Channel coding

Downlink Uplink

LDPC DL-SCH, PCH UL-SCH

Polar coding BCH, DCI UCI (payload size ≧ 12)

Block coding ― UCI (payload size < 12)

*48 Primary modulation scheme: The method used to embed a digi-

tal data stream on a radio carrier wave.
*49 Secondary modulation scheme: The method for further ma-
nipulation of the primary modulated data for purposes such
as frequency spreading.
*50 CP-OFDM: An OFDM method that adds a guard time (CP)
between symbols to suppress inter-symbol interference caused
by multipath propagation or the like.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

both Discrete Fourier Transform Spreading OFDM
(DFTS-OFDM), which suppresses the Peak-to-
51
Average Power Ratio (PAPR)*
coverage, and the same CP-OFDM scheme as used
in the downlink. This enables the use of unified
access schemes in the downlink and uplink, result-
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
to allow broader
equipment, transmission power control*54 is specified
by taking into consideration the beamforming op-
eration, which causes beamforming gain variation
when switching the transmitting/receiving beam.
The user equipment can use reference signals
to which the transmitting/receiving beams are ap-

ing in simpler systems.
2) Channel Coding Schemes
Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) coding and
polar coding are specified as the channel coding
schemes in NR, in addition to the block codes that
have already been used in LTE.
The LDPC coding scheme used in the data chan-
nel (DL-SCH: DownLink Shared CHannel, UL-SCH:
UpLink Shared CHannel, PCH: Paging CHannel) is
able to perform parallel processing to minimize de-
coding latency, and can thus operate close to the
52
Shannon limit* . The polar coding scheme used in
the control channel (DCI, UCI/uplink control in-
formation with a payload size of 12 or more) and
BCH (Broadcast CHannel) has less decoding com-
putation complexity compared with the convolu-
tional code used in LTE (TBCC: Tail-Biting Convo-
53
lutional Coding* ), while exhibiting superior char-
acteristics that approach the Shannon limit. The
same block codes as used in LTE are applied to
UCIs with a small payload size.
7. Transmit Power Control
7.1 Transmit Power Control Taking
Beam Control into Consideration
In NR, since transmitting/receiving beams can
be formed in both the base station and the user
plied in order to estimate the path loss*55 including
the beam gain. Specifically, the path loss is estimat-
ed by comparing the transmit power before apply-
ing the transmit beam with the received power af-
ter applying the receiving beam. By applying dif-
ferent transmitting/receiving beams to multiple ref-
erence signals, the reference signal to be used can
be dynamically switched to adapt to path loss fluc-
tuations caused by switching of the transmitting/
receiving beams.
Also, as in LTE, fractional transmission power
control is specified as a way of reducing the trans-
mit power at cell edges where the path loss is large.
For each transmitting/receiving beam, the power
control related parameters can be set differently
so that the path loss compensation and power off-
set can be optimized.
7.2 Distribution of Transmission
Power between LTE and NR
Release 15 specifies an upper limit of transmit
power based on guidelines for the protection of
humans. For the case of simultaneous transmissions
of LTE and NR in the same frequency range, the
total power between LTE and NR shall be within
a specified range of values [1].
In the Release 12 LTE DC, a user equipment can
be configured with a minimum guaranteed power

*51 PAPR: As the ratio of maximum power to average power, an
index expressing the peak magnitude of the transmit wave-
form. If this value is large, the amplifier power back-off has to
be large to avoid nonlinear distortion, which is particularly prob-
lematic for mobile terminals.
*52 Shannon limit (also known as Shannon communication-channel
capacity ): Theoretically derived from bandwidth and Signal-
to-Noise (SN) ratio, the maximum amount of information that
can be transmitted.
*53 TBCC: A type of error-correcting code; namely, a coding scheme
that generates codewords by using convolution calculation.
*54 Transmission power control: A technique of controlling transmis-
sion power such that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and Sig-
nal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) at the receiver ex-
ceed the required values.
*55 Path loss: Propagation path loss estimated from the differ-
ence between the transmitted power and received power.

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 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G
for each CG (cell group), and the user equipment
dynamically distributes the transmit power between
CGs such that each CG can at least use the mini-
mum guaranteed power. However, it is difficult
for early commercial user equipment to support this,
since it requires dynamic power sharing between
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal
LTE and NR transmitters. Therefore, Release 15
specifies a scheme whereby the base station semi-
statically configures the maximum transmission pow-
er for each CG. The behavior of user equipment
for power control could be different depending on
whether the user equipment supports dynamic pow-
er sharing between LTE and NR.
When the user equipment has a dynamic pow-
er sharing capability, it adjusts the NR transmis-
sion power so that the instantaneous total power
does not exceed the specified value. An example of
dynamic power distribution is shown in Figure 7.
When the maximum transmission power of LTE
and NR (P LTE, P NR) and the specified total power
Calculated
transmission
power Reduction
NR Actual
PNR
transmission
NR power
Ptotal
PLTE LTE LTE
Figure 7 Distribution of transmission power between LTE
and NR
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal Vol. 20 No. 3 (Jan. 2019)
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(P total) have been set and the instantaneous calcu-
lated total transmission power exceeds P total, the NR
transmission power is reduced so that the actual
transmission power of the user equipment does
not exceed P total.
Note that the base station is able to configure
the LTE and NR maximum powers so that their
total exceeds the specified value. However, if user
equipment does not have the ability to perform dy-
namic power sharing, its uplink transmissions will
be performed using time division multiplexing to
switch between LTE and NR.
8. BWP/CA
In NR, the maximum bandwidth per carrier is
much larger than in LTE: 100 MHz at frequencies
below 6 GHz and 400 MHz at higher frequencies.
For carriers operated with such a large bandwidth,
NR supports the BandWidth Part (BWP) concept
whereby user equipment can use smaller bandwidths
than the carrier bandwidth used by the base sta-
tion.
The base station uses higher-layer signaling to
set up a BWP configuration (bandwidth, frequency
position, subcarrier spacing) for the user equipment
to use during communication. Different user equip-
ment can be configured with different BWP configu-
rations (Figure 8). The BWP configuration can be
changed by higher layer signaling or L1 signaling.
Therefore, even when the user equipment supports
a sufficiently wide bandwidth, it is possible to set
a narrower BWP configuration when there is no
data traffic, thereby reducing the communication
 NR Physical Layer Specifications in 5G

System bandwidth

Frequency
NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal

Communication bandwidth for UE#2

Communication bandwidth for UE#1

Figure 8 Bandwidth of an individual UE

bandwidth and power consumption.
56
In NR, Carrier Aggregation (CA)*
in the same way as in LTE. When CA is performed,
BWP is configured for each Component Carrier
57
(CC)* . CA using CCs with different subcarrier
spacings is also supported, making it possible to
efficiently aggregate a wide range of frequencies
ranging from existing cellular frequencies to mil-
limeter waves.
in the physical layer. These functions make it pos-
is defined sible to deliver the high speed, large capacity and
low latency services that are expected for 5G.
NTT DOCOMO will continue to promote the stand-
ardization activities of 3GPP to make further ad-
vances for 5G technologies to provide even lower
latency and higher reliability for IoT applications,
reduce power consumption, and improve direct com-
munication between terminals.

REFERENCE
9. Conclusion [1] 3GPP TS38.101-1 V15.3.0: NR; User Equipment (UE)
radio transmission and reception, Sep. 2018.
This article has presented the NR Release 15
specifications, and the newly introduced functions

*56 CA: A technology for increasing bandwidth and data rate by

simultaneously transmitting and receiving signals for one user
using multiple carriers.
*57 CC: Term denoting each of the carriers used in CA.

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